Creating a Fictional Die-ary to Expose Korea’s Teen Gambling Crisis

Youbin> Toss is the most used financial app among Korean teenagers. Recently, as the rate of smartphone use has increased, it has emerged as a social problem that Korean adolescents are exposed to online illegal gambling without protection. However, while adults were worried about their children's smartphone addiction, they were not aware of the seriousness of online illegal gambling. This is because of the prejudice that gambling is only done by troubled teens and the fact that it is difficult to distinguish online gambling from simple mobile games. 

In fact, 40% of Korean teenagers have experience in online gambling and the average age is getting younger. The Korean National Police Agency learned that teenagers use Toss when charging gambling money into online illegal gambling accounts. Toss, which aims for equal and proper financial life, thought it was important to instill the right financial consciousness from youth, and wanted to carry out a campaign with the Korean National Police Agency to prevent the problem of illegal gambling among young people and warn against its dangers.

 

Youbin> Online illegal gambling has already been rapidly spreading among teenagers in Korea and serious addiction problems have occurred, but the obvious gambling prevention education videos and public service advertisements shown at schools were not very effective for young people. We planned a campaign to raise awareness with more unconventional forms and methods. What if we showed the process of becoming addicted to online gambling like real life for an ordinary teenager who started gambling for fun? 

Instagram was the best medium for this. Teenagers are interested in their peers and communicate with them daily through social media to share their daily lives and actions. We wanted to make Korean teenagers feel the dangers of gambling more vividly through Instagram, used by Korean teenagers for the longest time. To permeate into teenagers, we created a character named Park Do-young, a 16-year-old AI human (Park Do-young in reverse is read Young Do-Park, meaning ‘zero gambling’ in Korean). Hiding the fact that he was a fictional character, we created Park Do-young's Instagram account, made him look like an ordinary high school boy, and posted posts and gathered followers for about a month.

 

Youbin> From the planning stage, the Toss team conducted in-depth interviews with many students who were affected by gambling addiction under the cooperation of the Korean National Police Agency and analysed their process and pattern of being addicted to gambling and collected episodes. Along with the interview, we collected facial photos of teenagers who suffered from gambling damage, collaborated with our new tech solution team and Tencent to combine these, and after numerous tests, we created the character of Park Do-young. This was again implemented realistically like a real person, down to every movement and even subtle facial expressions through AI video face-swapping technology that captures and overlays actual models.

 

Youbin> At the beginning of Park Do-young's social media account, which was created while hiding that he was a fictional character, photos of him playing soccer or doing dance challenges with his friends and dating his girlfriend like a typical teenager were posted to make him look like an ordinary high school student. However, as he began to gamble, his social media profile gradually changed. He boasts of expensive brand shoes and items that high school students cannot afford, buys luxury gifts for his girlfriend and shows off his wealth to his friends. As he becomes increasingly addicted to gambling, his change is revealed: he looks at his cell phone even when he goes out to play with his friends, does not go out to exercise, and cannot let go of his cell phone in class. 

As we approach the end of the gambling addiction, the atmosphere gets darker. There are posts about hasty sales of cherished items secondhand or part-time jobs. Eventually, after capturing and posting a message suggesting debt collection, Park Do-young stops running the account after a meaningful message saying he wants to quit everything. Three days later, a film revealing Do-young's truth was finally released and the social media account ID was also changed to dy_gamblingdieary. Through the film, it turns out that Park Do-young, who looked like a normal 16-year-old high school student, is a virtual person created by AI synthesis of the faces of actual teenagers affected by gambling addiction.

 

Youbin> Recently, there was negative public opinion about crimes against AI technology such as deepfake, so we were worried that the use of such technology on sensitive topics would be seen differently from our intentions. However, we decided to use AI as it was considered the best way to make the stories of the victims feel real to the targets without exposing their faces. At this time, security was the most important in utilising the victim's data, so when creating an AI human character, it was produced according to the safety guides using an internal server. 

In order not to reveal that Park Do-young is a fictional character, we benchmarked the social media of various teenagers, analysed the tone and behavior of real teenagers, wrote posts so that they wouldn't feel different and even created accounts of Do-young’s friends tagging or commenting to make him look like a real person. All of the posts for about a month were designed based on the analysis of gambling addiction patterns based on interviews with actual students affected by gambling, and the source video was taken with a mobile phone, synthesised with AI to look like photos and shorts taken by a teenage high school student.

 

Youbin> When the film revealing Park Do-young's identity finally went on air a month later, and it was revealed that the social media account was also part of a campaign to show the process of gambling addiction, comments continued saying that the unexpected content and precise form were shocking. Numerous domestic and foreign media reports and articles poured out, and in the next month, there were more than four million views on YouTube and 1,000 likes. Fortunately, many people sympathised with the purpose and were surprised at the fact that such a campaign was conducted by Toss, an online financial app. In addition, voices calling for awareness about the issue of teenagers' online gambling addiction have increased.

 

Youbin> Teenagers who indulge in illegal gambling usually start lightly, like a game at first, at their friend's recommendation. Usually, they earn a lot of money in the beginning and easily fall into addiction, and after that, they cannot quit on their own, so they borrow money from around them. When gambling addiction gets worse, there have been cases where it leads to extreme choices due to unmanageable debts and hardships as well as secondary crimes such as fraud and theft. 

We encountered various cases of online gambling addiction and came to sympathise deeply with the seriousness of the problem. Adolescents are more prone to addiction than adults and can be afraid of being treated as criminals, so often do not ask for help. Through Park Do-young, we wanted to emphasise that not only troublemakers can become addicted to online gambling but anyone can. We wanted to include the message that gambling addiction should not be regarded as a mistake only teens make, but that adults should also pay more attention.

 

Youbin> After the campaign film was released, the number of visitors to the website exceeded 300,000, and the number of people who left messages of concern about the dangers of online illegal gambling also exceeded 3,000. It was gratifying that many people recognised our intentions. After the media report, we were able to receive feedback from more people saying that they regret falling into gambling and demanding awakening.

 

Youbin> As an extension of the campaign, Toss issued a guide to help people discover signs of gambling in everyday life that can be overlooked at first glance and created a system to immediately report suspicious gambling accounts, continuing efforts to solve the illegal gambling problem among teenagers. In the two months since the campaign began, the number of reports of gambling accounts has exceeded 60. Toss also has a family security alert system that allows children using the Toss app to notify their families when they send money to suspicious gambling accounts, which increased usage by 82% compared to before the campaign.

 

Youbin> Still, hundreds of online gambling sites are popping up every day, tempting teenagers, and it is very difficult to arrest those who operate overseas servers and avoid the law enforcement network. However, with Park Do-young's social account and campaign film, I hope that awareness of the dangers of online illegal gambling and protection measures will increase in this society, and furthermore, I hope that teenage adolescents can enjoy a bright and healthy future in a safer world.